I disagree a little bit with the credibility of some of the examples, and want to double-click others. But regardless, I think this is a very productive train of thought and thank you for writing it up. Interesting!
And btw, if you feel like a topic of investigation “might not fit into the EA genre”, and yet you feel like it could be important based on first-principles reasoning, my guess is that that’s a very important lead to pursue. Reluctance to step outside the genre, and thinking that the goal is to “do EA-like things”, is exactly the kind of dynamic that’s likely to lead the whole community to overlook something important.
Many thanks for the feedback and for the encouragement! The examples were a bit speculative, though the fish one is quite well-known, I think it was in the 90s. Also I know that it’s only recently that the effects of long-term studies of small yet steady concentrations of macro-molecules have begun to be conducted, not least because ten years ago we didn’t have the technology to pursue such kinds of studies. If anybody is interested to ‘research together’ I can do imagine pursuing this further (this is an invitation), at the moment though it’s just an idle thought.
So please, anybody with more knowledge and means, if you’re interested, I’d welcome the chance to conduct a literature review for anything mentioned above, and we can take it from there!
I disagree a little bit with the credibility of some of the examples, and want to double-click others. But regardless, I think this is a very productive train of thought and thank you for writing it up. Interesting!
And btw, if you feel like a topic of investigation “might not fit into the EA genre”, and yet you feel like it could be important based on first-principles reasoning, my guess is that that’s a very important lead to pursue. Reluctance to step outside the genre, and thinking that the goal is to “do EA-like things”, is exactly the kind of dynamic that’s likely to lead the whole community to overlook something important.
Dear Emrik,
Many thanks for the feedback and for the encouragement! The examples were a bit speculative, though the fish one is quite well-known, I think it was in the 90s. Also I know that it’s only recently that the effects of long-term studies of small yet steady concentrations of macro-molecules have begun to be conducted, not least because ten years ago we didn’t have the technology to pursue such kinds of studies.
If anybody is interested to ‘research together’ I can do imagine pursuing this further (this is an invitation), at the moment though it’s just an idle thought.
So please, anybody with more knowledge and means, if you’re interested, I’d welcome the chance to conduct a literature review for anything mentioned above, and we can take it from there!